Premising that his doctrines were collected at least 200 years B. C., the first which we notice is one that he not only inculcated by language but enforced by his abiding example. He taught that the comforts and pleasures of this life act as fetters, to chain man's spirit to earth; that day by day they necessitate the cultivation of propensities and passions more or less bestial in their nature; and that as these strengthen, so the individual who possessed them would be born again, after his death, to some form of misery and woe in which he would have to atone for the human infirmities which he had not conquered. To escape from the possibility of such an event, Sakya counselled his disciples to wean themselves, as far as possible, from every sensual passion; to mortify the body by fasting, so as to make it more readily separable from the inner man; to renounce all comfort except that of doing good; and believing in a state of perfect future salvation. A man, he taught, must abandon everything as valueless compared with the attainment of salvation or _nirvana_; he must be wholly dependent upon others for food and raiment; he must take no thought for the morrow, and live like a bird or lily, laying up no store; for certainly a disciple of Sakya ought not to undertake any trade or other means of gaining a livelihood, lest it should ensnare his spirit and tie it down to the grovelling things of earth. This was the rule for the very faithful, the infirm believers had a more lenient code.